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by softlybarnes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-07 20:48:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13443102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softlybarnes/pseuds/softlybarnes
Summary: Bucky comes home from his second tour overseas, after a long time away from the reader.





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is somewhat dark. I still hope you like it! Let me know what you think!

It’s closing time, the bar silent and still.

It’s almost odd.

No noise. No movement. No raucous laughter. No strangely sweet bikers to worry over her safety.

She feels empty when the bar is empty, when her customers have left. A lump forms in her throat as she glances around. The shattered thing in her chest gives a painful thump against her aching ribs. Y/N clutches her belly as anxiousness roils through her.

When everyone goes home and she’s left alone, night after night, the loneliness settles back in her bones. It winds up her spine and through her ribs, strangling her battered heart. Her lungs shutter, bruised beyond comprehension.

She sniffles, realizing she’s just been standing behind the counter staring out over her bar. The loneliness, the emptiness, only intensifies. Y/N grabs a glass and slams it down onto the counter, splashing amber liquid into it with a violent force.

Another fissure of sadness drives through her chest as she tosses it back.

She should clean up. She needs to clean up. She needs to empty the cash box. She needs to at least walk across the bar and lock the door. But her feet won’t move and she just keeps staring. All she wants to do is lie down on the floor and sleep.

Glass crunches under her boots as she shifts her weight. She dropped a glass earlier and never cleaned it up. She should sweep it up and yet all she wants to do is lie down. Even with glass on the floor.

She pours another glass of whatever the stuff in the bottle she holds happens to be. She’s about to throw it back when the door opens.

A man shuffles in, the door slamming shut behind him. He stays shrouded in the shadows on the other side of the room. His long hair partially covers his face along with a dark baseball cap. Y/N pauses, setting her glass back on the counter without drinking its contents. Immediately she notices the slump of his shoulders, the shuffling of his feet. His loneliness is as palpable as hers.

Her eyes dart to his left side where he’s missing an arm. The heavy boots on his feet, the shape of his shoulders, the loneliness pouring off him in waves, all mark him as a potential veteran. Along with the bikers that frequented the bar, were vets. Still she rolls her eyes, not wanting to deal with another drunk. “Hey buddy, we’re closed.”

“I know,” his voice rasps out, quiet and small. “I’m not here to drink.”

Fear licks up her spine when he reaches back and twists the lock into place. “You really should lock your doors,” he murmurs.

“You should leave,” she says, reaching under the counter, checking that her pistol is still there. “I’m not in the business of welcoming people after hours.”

He looks up then, eyes darting to where her hand is positioned under the counter. “You don’t remember me?” She frowns, opens her mouth to say something. “I know I look different. But I thought you’d at least remember my voice.”

Fear is still raking down her spine, sharp tipped claws wanting to make her run in fear. “I don’t know you.” But there’s a tremble in her voice that says she does. She’s starting too.

The man, well-built and large, steps into the low lighting of the bar, coming closer and closer to her place behind the counter. “Heard you’ve been drinkin’ yourself sick, darlin’. I don’t remember you bein’ much of a drinker. You never did hold your alcohol well.”

A tear burns a white hot path down her cheek. She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, biting the already bitten flesh harshly. He keeps moving toward her until he’s right in front of her, just that small band of a wooden river between them. And when he looks at her, there is no denying who those blue eyes belong to.

“James,” she whispers, knees shaking. Her hands brace against the counter as she bows her head, more tears threatening to fall.

“Not even Bucky anymore? Has it really been that long?” She hears the strain, the heartbreak, the anxiety, in his voice.

The glass crunches underfoot again. And then silence falls.

And it’s.

The loudest goddamn thing she’s ever heard.

“Y/N,” his voice is quieter than the booming silence, than the crunching glass, than the river of tears threatening their descent from her eyes. “I’m home.”

She releases a long breath. It’s like a hard wind, urging her forward. The glass pops one last time under her boots as she starts to move.

In the time it takes her to move around the counter her heart falls apart. The shattered, stitched, badly patched, Band-Aid stuck, stapled, bleeding thing in her chest falls apart. The pieces crash, burn, shatter, bleed, and fall into his hand.

The pieces are already being cradled delicately, preciously, by a large, rough, trusted hand when she smashes into him. Her arms circle his neck and for the first time in years a peace settles over her bones, replacing the wild, unchecked lonely sadness that had snapped her bones and tendons nightly. The desperate talons that had scraped at the inside of her skin for years, disappear. The sorrow that picks at her heart and lungs and belly daily is instantly soothed when Bucky’s large hand strokes down her back.

“ _Bucky_ ,” she whispers into his neck. It makes sense suddenly, why none of her one night stands ever filled in that scribbled dark hole in her chest. They did not smell like lavender and leather. They did not have large, gentle hands. They did not have the perfect amount of scruff on their cheeks. They were not kind beyond all human understanding. They did not have the wings of an angel hidden on their backs, invisible to most everyone. They wanted something from her.

And James.

 _Bucky_.

Would never ask her for anything, even if he could ask for everything. He could demand the world and she would break her back to give it to him, drag herself over hot coals, give up everything, _anything_ , to give him whatever he wanted.

But he’d never ask.

And that’s love.

“Bucky,” she whispers into his neck, feels his hot tears against her cheek as his hand fists in the back of her shirt, bringing her that much closer. “You’re home.”

“Of course I came home. I heard my best girl missed me.”

A wild, desperate sob fights its way out of her throat. “I did. I did, Bucky. I missed you every day, all day.”

The others. The one night stands. They had not filled the darkness inside her. No light could ever match that of Bucky Barnes. No light would ever be as addicting and soul-searing as his. And when it was gone…the darkness was only amplified, heavier, blacker, more crushing.

The others had seen the dark loneliness in her and smiled, lips twisting at the advantage they had over her. They had wanted her body, her mouth, her bed. Only for a night, only long enough to make her feel whole for a moment. And, truth be told, she didn’t want anyone else. She hadn’t wanted them to stay, to shine a light. She was afraid of what might be revealed if anyone looked into her soul for too long.

“I missed you too, Y/N.”

“Have you been back long?”

“No. You’re my first stop. My last stop.” She feels his nose nuzzle into her cheek and her lip quivers at the warmth that spreads through her. “You are my only stop, Y/N. I’m not going anywhere.”

“It’s been so long.”

“But it’s only been you. It’s only ever been you. As soon as I was state side…I couldn’t wait to see you, the whole time I was in that damn rehabilitation unit-,”

She pulls back and moves her hands to fist in the material of his hoodie against his ribs. She shakes him a little. “Why didn’t you call me? I would have come to see you.” The anxiety returns in full force, sickly thin fingers trailing along the inside on her belly. He had probably heard of her exploits. He probably did not want her any longer.

She remembers his face when he had come home from his first tour. The depression, the anxiety, the trauma, the nightmares, and fear of loud noises. And then…it had been time for him to go back, a second tour, and he had. And she had told him she couldn’t take it anymore. It would be better if they broke up, easier.

It hadn’t been.

It had been more devastating.

She had missed him more.

And now-

“I didn’t want you to see me like that. Laid up in a hospital bed. Fuckin’ armless. Thinkin’ it’s still there most days. Losing my goddamn mind over and over when I realize it isn’t.” He bites his lip hard, avoiding her eyes. “I was…going to get a prosthetic but um, it’s expensive and I don’t have the money.”

Her brain is laughing at her, poking fun, calling her selfish and pointing fingers. A man, an angel, has come back from war, and she’s only thinking about herself, about what she had done while he was gone. And _Bucky_ …he had been worried about her, worried she would not accept him with one less appendage that really meant nothing in the grand scheme of things.

She must let her silence stretch too long, her self-loathing crowding out the clouds of softer thoughts, because he starts to pull away, fingers trailing slowly away from her back as though he’s trying to savor the feeling of her under his fingertips. His eyes dart nervously away, looking everywhere but at her.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he says, dropping the pieces of her heart. They land amongst the peanut shells of the un-swept floor. “It was stupid of me to bother you at all. I’m sure you’ve got uh, someone in your life now. Other things to do than stand here with a broken man.” He grits his teeth. He looks like he’s about to shatter as he pulls away.

She grabs his hand and pulls him back, her chin going to his shoulder, arms winding around his waist. “No. There’s no one. I’ve been waiting.”

He exhales hard, the sound like heaven to her ears. He’s alive. He could have been killed. Her angel on earth could have been cut down, slaughtered like the mortals he walks amongst. He clutches at her back, like she matters, like she matters to _him_. “You waited.” He sounds amazed, dazed, like he loves her now as much as he had before.

“Come upstairs,” she whispers. “Come with me.”

He doesn’t protest. His boots don’t scrape against the floor. His fingers don’t scrabble at the counter. There is no playing coy. She appreciates it.

The dark stain inside her chest is lightening, brightening, just by being near him.

“Do you want a drink?” she ask as they creak up the wooden stairs, their hands still tangled together. “I have everything.”

“Yeah,” he says, nerves trembling in his voice.

They stop in her kitchen in her apartment above the bar. His eyes roving over everything as they both take a few shots of liquid courage. She knows he’s noting that nothing has changed. In the bedroom his clothes still stand in the closet, like soldier ghosts waiting for their host to come home.

Y/N pulls him close in the bedroom and kisses him gently, his mouth yielding to hers easily. His fingers draw down her back, lighting a small path of nerves. Want swims in her veins, dampens her panties. “I’ve missed you,” she whispers against his mouth. “Will you tell me what happened?”

He pulls away and her soul seems to freeze.

He sits heavily on the edge of the bed.

Y/N feels cold when he doesn’t look at her. He stares down at his open hand. In his trembling palm sits the pieces of her heart, picked up and dusted off from floor downstairs. “Y/N…if you thought I was broken before-,”

“I didn’t.” Her voice is hard, adamant.

“I’m not whole. And I know that you must have been with others.”

Her stomach folds in on itself. Her heart is screaming at her. _Grab the pieces and run, he doesn’t care for you. He knows what a whore you’ve been._

She looks away. She trembles. “I was. But I’ve never…they meant nothing. They…made me-they make me-they weren’t you.” She stumbles over her words. A wretched, violent, shiver licks like a flame up her spine. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry-,”

Her angel. She’s made her angel sad. “No,” he says, reaching out for her hand. “I love you. Doesn’t matter what you did. I know I left you all alone. We weren’t together, Y/N. I left you all alone.”

“Then what-,” she asks, turning back to him, hand in his, rough meeting soft, love meeting love. His angel’s wings droop, his eyes skirt hers. “I’m not the same. I don’t look-,”

“Looks?” She whispers indignantly. “Looks?” He cringes hard. “You _came home_. _You_. You came back.” She keeps his hand in hers and sits in his lap. “Looks don’t matter.” She reaches up and pulls off his hat, tossing it away. “You have long hair now. Fine. You’re more muscular now. Fine. You lost an arm. Fine. You are different but you are my Bucky, my James. And I missed you so much.”

He does look different. It’s why she hadn’t recognized him immediately. His hair is long where it had been short. He’s more muscular where he had been slimmer. His clothes are different, shabbier. The hat had obscured his eyes. And of course, the last time she had seen him he had had both his arms. All that, combined with the darkness and the baseball cap, had made him hard to recognize.

His eyes, though, his eyes are the same.

She thinks he’s just as beautiful now as he was before.

Her hands go to either side of his head as her lips flit over his. “Let me see you. Let me see the new you. Your soul, I know, is exactly the same.”

Slowly, over the course of hours, they peel their clothes off. Reverently touching every part of the other. Y/N patiently reassures him over every scar and bump and insecurity. And when he makes that first slow slide into her, stretching her and filling her in ways the others never could, a tear slips down her cheek.

He leans down and licks away the tear, giving her cheek a gentle kiss as she wraps her legs around his waist. He stands at the edge of the bed, thumb stroking a small circle into her hip. “You’re fuckin’ beautiful, Y/N. And I missed you. I had your picture in my helmet and I look at it every day. Just stare at you. I hoped you’d wait. But I wasn’t sure.”

She tugs him down by his dog tags and kisses his lips slowly. “You’re the only person I’ll ever wait for. Now move. Make love to me.” Her fingers release the tags and trail down his muscular chest, down his abs. “Move Bucky.”

He does. His pace is slow at first but soon becomes hard and fast. Cries slip from her lips, back arching, voice trembling. He kisses her lips, the space between her breasts.

James, simply put, shatters her, shatters everything and puts it back together all in the space of an infinitesimally small time in the long length of the world. She keeps him close when she comes, feeling the trembling of his own body as he does too. When he collapses Y/N just pulls him closer and kisses his temple.

He tries to readjust but she doesn’t let him and they eventually fall asleep.

 

~

 

She wakes to Bucky moving her body gently so she lies the correct way on the bed. Not saying anything she watches as he perches on the edge and opens her bedside table’s drawer. The pack of cigarettes is old but he still sticks one between his teeth and lights it with shaking fingers.

She watches his muscular back. Watches the smooth shift of muscle and tendon. She feels settled. Good. Whole. Her bright light is back. Her hand trembles when she traces a long scar on his back.

“I’m not going to be easy to be around, Y/N.”

“I know. I don’t care. I’ll help you. Like last time.”

“Well,” he says bitterly as she sits up behind him. “It’s not like they’ll take me back.” Her arms circle his waist as he turns his head slightly to look at her. “I never shoulda went back. Never shoulda left ya.”

She shakes her head and moves his hair to kiss the back of his neck lightly. “Doesn’t matter. You’re back. You’re alive. And you care for me still. That’s what matters.” She lets her tongue flick over a freckle on his shoulder before she bites at his pulse point gently.

He shivers and leans back into her as she presses her ear to his shoulder, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

“I’m not going anywhere. I’ve put you through a lot,” he sighs. “But we’ll move forward together.”

A tiny smile, the first one that’s graced her lips in years, pulls at her mouth. The only thing she can do is agree.


End file.
